2099: Headlines Warn of Global Cooling

Tsvi Bisk

By Tsvi Bisk

Howard Nathan was reading his hologram news “paper” at breakfast (funny how archaisms survive, he thought—there hadn’t been paper newspapers for well over 50 years). It was December 2099, and the pundits had begun to pontificate about the new century.

The headline “Worried Environmentalists” caught his eye; it was an article about the impending manmade Ice Age and the disappearance of the world’s deserts.

The threat of global cooling was now a hot topic for debate, since the threats to human well-being that had distressed humanity at the beginning of the century had motivated imaginative inventors and policy makers to develop successful solutions to counterbalance greenhouse gases:

1. The widespread adoption of vertical urban agriculture enabled an area the size of Denmark to provide enough food for 7 billion people. The rewilding of vast areas of the planet resulted. Forests had re-conquered Europe and China; rain forests had re-conquered India and Brazil. This explosion in biomass feasted on atmospheric carbon dioxide like ecological piranhas, absorbing 50 gigatons a year.

2. Artificial photosynthesis that absorbed CO2 more than 1,000 times faster than plant life had been developed in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Engineers had developed economic ways to extract this CO2 and make petroleum using bacteria and sunlight. Since hydrocarbons were still needed as the feedstock for more than 500,000 useful products (plastics, medicines, cosmetics, etc.), this process had spread across the planet.

3. Nanotechnologies accelerated the advent of energy-autonomous vehicles and buildings. Cars were now built out of buckypaper (weighing less than the driver), which also functioned as a hyper-efficient photovoltaic skin providing electric energy to run the car. Most buildings were outfitted with mini-de-polymerization units that converted all human waste, garbage, and trash to gas that provided all the electricity, heating, and cooking the building needed. The sewage system had become a thing of the past decades ago, as had garbage and trash collection. Landfills spewing methane were now long gone. The electric grid and its ugly pylons no longer existed.

4. Massive forestation of the planet’s semi-arid areas had begun in the 2010s and was sucking up several gigatons of CO2 a year (in addition to the rewilding). Genetic engineers had developed plants that could use sea water or survive on evening dew. Vast areas of desert were now overrun with these exotics and experts worried that future generations would never see the wondrous beauty, or experience the spiritual effects of the deserts.

Howard was not worried. Like his grandfather, who was also a psychologist with a thriving practice treating Global Warming Anxiety Syndrome, Howard now had a thriving practice treating Global Cooling Anxiety Syndrome. One could always depend on human neuroses to make a living. Everything had changed, but human beings had remained the same.

Tsvi Bisk is director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Strategic Thinking. Email bisk@futurist-thinking.co.il.